I know that this comic is grossly overdue and I am sorry. I don’t really have an excuse other than exhaustion caught up with me after getting back from C2E2. I had to get my house back in order, spend time with my kids and wife and there just wasn’t time for anything else last week.

Of course, like a dummy, I had to go ahead and make this comic double-sized. Like I didn’t have enough on my plate.

I’ve never worked with a buffer and that has usually been to my detriment. However, it’s only bitten me on the rear end a couple of times. This was one of those times. I feel bad enough about it, but what’s done is done. Time to move on.

A quick recap: From April 13 – 15, I was exhibiting at C2E2 in Chicago and had a great time. Oddly, it was probably one of the most profitable shows I’ve ever been to. Which, of course, is great. I had a lot of people come up to me just like they did at Emerald City Comic Con and tell me that they were sorry to hear the comic was ending. I was really touched.

Most amazingly, at one point while drawing sketches, I had a line of people waiting to talk to me. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN, folks. Sometimes I’ll be talking to one person and there will be another person off to the side looking at my Spoiler t-shirt. But a line? People who came to see me and then waited? That was a first. It actually made me wonder if I should be ending the comic at all!

But, alas. The comic is ending and this is the end cap of all the dramatic stuff.

I took a little bit of criticism for the comic a couple of weeks ago for heaping on the melodrama. Bad melodrama.

Hey, I get it. Some of you want jokes about Cabin in the Woods. Me, too. But those aren’t the comics I’m making right now. I have to wrap this up the way I feel is best. And, yeah, maybe drama isn’t my strong suit. But it’s something I wanted to try before I closed up shop. Charlie and Jimmy specifically were characters whose involvement I felt should be resolved before moving forward.

That said, you’ll be pleased to know that there will be plenty of Avengers action starting next week. And, as I’m sure you know, Iron Man is in the Avengers. And where Iron Man goes, CARDBOARD IRON MAN is sure to follow.

I consider it kind of serendipitous that there would be an opportunity for another Cardboard Iron Man story arc in the last year of the comic. Although I somewhat bemoan the fact that Theater Hopper won’t be here for Iron Man 3.

Since the theater caught on fire, I knew at some point I had to draw Charlie back into the story. Since the end of ACT II where I kind of confirmed, “Yeah, they’re together” – I had to establish that there were some emotions at stake here.

Problem was, I couldn’t figure out a way to make it funny. I was staring at my paper most of Sunday night and couldn’t think of anything.

Then, late at night, I was flipping channels and came upon this scene from Talladgea Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby.

You’re welcome, everybody.

It’s actually kind of odd that Talladega Nights would inspire me in that way. Especially since we learned that Michael Clarke Duncanpassed away the other day at the age of 54. I always liked Duncan and I thought he was particularly effective in Talladega Nights. Honestly, he was always best when he was playing against type. I wish he had the opportunity to play more comedic roles. He obviously had a great sense of humor about himself.

At any rate, that’s all I’ve got for now. I hope you enjoyed the comic and I’ll catch up with you guys soon!

Better late than never, right? That should become Theater Hopper’s official motto at this point.

Last week I was out of town attending a conference in Portland. So first let me say this: Portlandia? I totally get it now.

More germaine to the conversation however, is that I’ve been trying to catch up with my life all off this week. My wife, the kids, work, social obligations, taped episodes of Big Brother – all of it. It’s been a very hectic week. Basically penciled one night, inked the next night, colored a third night and did shading and lettering last night. UGH. I suck.

I don’t have much to say about the comic other that it was important to establish what happened to Jimmy. Soon we’ll find out what happened to Victor. The chess pieces are being moved into place. Checkmate is inevitable. In less than a few comics, we’ll be dealing with the aftermath and that’ll be it it – all she wrote.

Help me out and share this comic with your friends. Y’know… on account of the lateness. If you could tell them “Hey, Theater Hopper’s ending soon. Better get in on the action before it’s took late!” that would be awesome.

Thanks again to everyone for their patience. These last few months have been a long, hard slog for me. I really don’t want to let go. It’s painful, but it has to be done.

You want to know how long I’ve been writing this storyline? It started before The Avengers was in theaters and continues now that The Avengers has come out on Blu-ray. That’s a long time!

I received my copy of The Avengers in the mail yesterday and I was pretty psyched about it. I haven’t watched it yet partially because I was still working on this comic. But also because Cami has been eager to rewatch it and this week has just been hell.

Do you ever have one of those weeks where your professional commitments keep you from seeing your spouse or loved ones? Yeah, that’s the kind of week we’re having. Cami had two events she had to go to on Monday and Tuesday night, I have an event I have to go to this evening. At this point, we’re tasking the kids with relaying messages to one another like carrier pigeons.

Looking over the 4-disc copy of The Avengers I got, I was pretty impressed with all of the extras. Not only do you get the Blu-ray, but you get the 3D Blu-ray, DVD and digital version. If you go online and register a code, you can also download the soundtrack for free, get a copy of a digital comic and send away for a free 18 x 24″ poster.

This is what the poster looks like, by the way:

And people are complaining about Marvel getting into bed with Disney??

At the time Amazon was offering preorders, they were charging $30 for the whole thing. But I found a coupon online that shaved $5 off the price. I thought I was pretty smart grabbing the whole thing for $25. I mean, that’s a lot of content!

Although yesterday evening I saw that Amazon was now selling the 4-disc set for $19.99 and that pissed me off a little bit. Heard from a reader, though, that Amazon was going to refund the difference under the lowest price preorder guarantee, or whatever.

Look, I’m just saying that for $20, you could do a hell of a lot worse. If you haven’t ordered your copy of The Avengers yet, use my link. I get a kickback. 😉

It took me way too long to produce this comic, I realize. I spoke about it on Monday when I published Indigo’s guest strip. Basically, the details I’m trying to force into this arc are killing me. I literally spent an hour last night trying to figure out what the wall Victor broke through was going to look like. I was getting so desperate, I was considering buying a stock photo. Finding reference shots for this kind of stuff is HARD.

In the end, I untangled the knot of Christmas tree lights in my head and produced a solution. Although, in hindsight, I don’t think all of that fussing necessarily produced the best result. But, hey! I’m trying, right?

So, is Victor alive? Is he dead? Did he use his last ounce of brute strength to break through a cinder block wall to escape the fire? Find out soon in the next exciting episode of… THEATER HOPPER!

I didn’t post a new comic last week and I feel bad about that. But I’m also actually kind of glad I didn’t.

Something interesting happened this week and I don’t know if you saw it, but it was certainly relevant to the situation I find myself in, as we head into the home stretch toward Theater Hopper’s conclusion.

I’m not certain how much of our audience overlaps, but this week Tim Buckley decided to reboot his long-running gaming comic Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Tim and I started roughly the same time. We socialized a little at the beginning, but it wasn’t long after that his comic took off.

Tim’s kind of an odd cat in webcomics. He has an enormous following, but he’s a bit of a pariah among creators. I’ve never had a personal problem with the guy, but I’ve heard the stories about him and they’re kind of hard to ignore. So on Tuesday when Scott Kurtz, Dave Kellet, Brad Guigar and Kris Straub reassembled to produce a new episode of Webcomics Weekly to discuss Tim’s decision, the armchair analysis and schadenfreude were in full bloom.

I can’t quite articulate what it was about their recording that hit home for me, but a lot of what they expressed was immediately recognizable to me. There was a lot of talk about being burnt out, about maturing, about moving beyond the gag-a-day format and shedding the pursuit of persistent updates to generate revenue from advertising networks that don’t really pay out anymore.

I was listening and nodding my head the entire time.

I don’t know what’s going on right now, but I’m detecting this weird sea change in regards to web comics. Maybe I’m sensitive to it because I’m in the middle of it, but I’m hearing a lot of talk about ditching the traditional models, about moving into new territories.

I kind of consider myself to have caught the tail end of the “First Wave” of webcomics. Most of the big name web comics established themselves between 1998 and 2000 by people that wanted to be cartoonists but couldn’t get the time of day from the syndicates. Theater Hopper came along in 2002. So basically, I’m one of those people who looked at webcomics and said “I’ve never submitted to a syndicate, but I’ve always enjoyed cartooning and this looks viable.”

I don’t know. Maybe I’m Second Wave. Maybe it doesn’t matter. All I know is that 10 years in the game is a long time and it was comforting to know that other creators have struggled with the same issues, have the same thoughts and are afraid about throwing away the brand they’ve built up over the course of the “career.”

Now Tim didn’t exactly throw his comic away. His stripped it down. He got rid of what he thought wasn’t working and says he’s going to go back to more gag-a-day style comics about gaming. Some people have asked me why I don’t do the same thing with Theater Hopper – dump the stuff that I don’t think is working or is too time-intensive.

I know that I’ve expressed it before, but I never wanted to leave Theater Hopper in a “less than” position. In other words, having elevated the comic to a certain level from a time-investment standpoint and being unable to keep pace with it any longer, stripping things away from it for the sake of efficiency doesn’t feel fair to me. Fair for the audience, I mean.

For me – as much as it hurts to do it – letting Theater Hopper go is the best thing for it. That’s why it was important for me to communicate my goals for the last year of the comic – so that you guys knew what was going on and understood. More than anything else with these last few comics, I want to convey the idea that these characters will “be okay.” It’s as much for you as it is for me. Because I’ll be sorry to leave them behind.

I don’t know how successful I’ve been at communicating what I gleaned from Tim’s reboot or the Webcomics Weekly podcast this week. All I know is that it made me feel a little less haunted about the decision I made to end the comic.

This was an idea that I had started to kick around probably sometime this summer. It’s taken this long to move the chess pieces around to get us there.

I talked with Multiplex creator Gordon McAlpin several months ago. I followed up with him last week to see if he still might be interested in adopting Jimmy and Charlie once Theater Hopper ended.

As fortune would have it, he was still interested! So I went ahead and drew Jimmy and Charlie’s last Theater Hopper comic, knowing that I was sending them off into an unknown future. But a future where I at least knew they would be in good hands.

Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but I like this idea of handing Jimmy and Charlie over to Gordon for use in Multiplex for several reasons.

First of all, Gordon’s a hell of a writer and relationships are his specialty. Jimmy and Charlie have a rich background – one I invested a lot of time into. Their lengthy back story was not something I had really tried before as a writer. Turning these characters over to a writer as competent as Gordon ensures their story will continue in some form.

I also like the idea because – from what I’ve gathered – it’s somewhat unprecedented.

Now, web comics as a genre run pretty far and wide. So I could be completely off-base, but I’ve never heard of one creator handing over a set of characters to another creator like this.

Sure, characters change hands between writers and artists all the time. But usually they stay confined within the universe they were created in. How often has it occurred that a creator establishes characters in one universe and hands them over to a creator with their own established universe? It would be like Marvel turning to DC Comics and saying “Here. You can have Spider-Man from now on. Have fun with him!”

I don’t know. I could be completely wrong. If I am, I take it all back. I didn’t intend to offend. But I haven’t come across it in the last 10 years I’ve made web comics.

Lastly, the reason I like this idea is because it gives the people who supported Theater Hopper a place to land once the comic ends next week. My comic and Gordon’s comic have always had a close affiliation. I’m certain there is a lot of overlap between our fans. But in case there isn’t, Jimmy and Charlie showing up in Gordon’s comic gives my fans a conduit through which to explore one hell of a great comic in Multiplex. If you like Theater Hopper, I know you’ll find a lot to enjoy there.

Whatever happens, I told Gordon he’s free to do with the characters whatever he wants. If he decides to make Jimmy a serial killer and Charlie a lesbian, that’s his choice. The characters are his now to do with as he pleases. I don’t want Gordon to write the characters as I would have. I want to witness with everyone else the new places he takes them.

I don’t know for sure when Jimmy or Charlie will first appear in Multiplex, but Gordon indicated it would be sometime early next year – as soon as his current story line concludes. So help me keep an eye out for them, will you?

I’m very excited about this step forward. I think it’s unique and a lot of fun. I hope you guys feel the same way about it as I do.

If you could help spread the word about this comic, I would greatly appreciate it. I originally intended to upload it last Friday. But a blizzard that whipped through town last Wednesday left our home without power for over 24 hours. We were kind of scrambling to get things back together on the homefront and the Friday update didn’t happen.

A change like this is a blockbuster and I’m worried that not a lot of people are going to see it due to the holiday. If you’re reading this right now, MAKE SURE OTHERS SEE IT. Share it on Facebook or Twitter. Let your web comic reading friends know. Even if they don’t read Theater Hopper or Multiplex, the might get a kick out of what we’re doing. Who knows?

I have another comic that I intend to work on and update for Christmas. We’re doing another small leap forward in time so the comic I’m posting on Christmas actually takes place on Christmas. So be on the lookout for that.

After the Christmas comic, there will be one more comic this week. After that, the VERY LAST THEATER HOPPER WILL BE PUBLISHED MONDAY, DECEMBER 31.